


Find My Way Home

by lornesgoldenhair



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Divergent Timelines, F/M, Post Regeneration, Regeneration
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-02-18 12:16:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13099929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lornesgoldenhair/pseuds/lornesgoldenhair
Summary: With a backstory set between the end of series 9 and the start of season 10 of Doctor Who, the main action takes place timeline wise after 12 regenerates at Christmas 2017. Or does it?Alone in the TARDIS after Clara’s death, and their separation for the good of the universe, the griefstricken 12th doctor uses every ounce of his resilience and intellect to alter his timeline forever. Once done there’s no going back; he has opted out of the future as it was destined and given it over to another. As he watches them take his life and run he can only pray that one day his sacrifice will be rewarded; that one day, he will find her again. At a time when he should be dying, will he find the strength to carry on? Or will he be lost forever, an outcast from his own timeline, with no place to call home?





	1. Everything Ends

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been searching for most of my life  
> Trying to find someone to make sense of it all  
> You walked in and my life began again  
> At the time when it thought that it might end  
> It’s a strange kind of a love  
> That’s keeps me holding on  
> It’s the lines on your skin  
> That find my way home…  
> I’ve been searching for most of my life  
> Trying to find something to come into my life  
> Your walked in and my life began again  
> At the time when I thought that it might end  
> It’s a strange kind of love, that keeps me hanging on  
> It’s the lines on your skin, that find my way home  
> It’s a strange kind of love  
> That keeps me holding on  
> It’s the lines on your skin  
> That find my way home  
> It’s a strange kind of love 
> 
> Craig Armstong, Strange Kind of Love.
> 
> (The song Capaldi used to ‘get in the zone’ regarding the relationship between the doctor and his companion.)

 

Un-named time. He had ceased to tally the days and weeks, he was certain years had passed. Only the soft hum of the TARDIS and the constant throb of the seconds ticking by uncounted made him aware that he wasn’t suspended, as timeless as She was, and that he continued to breathe the cool air of the ship. He survived.

Was this what it felt like to her now? Each day the same? Or was her life, restored and frozen, filled with adventure and risk, nothing to lose after all, the day of her death sealed forever as a fixed point in time to which she must return? If he knew her at all she would be squeezing each drop of energy from the galaxies she sailed through in her stolen ship. A silent heart, with so much more to give, demanding each second owed to her.

And here he sat, allegedly alive, in a darkened corner or what used to be his, hidden from everything and everyone; the deed done, his timeline ripped in two. He was waiting. Only the TARDIS, ancient and disapproving, knew of his slow pulse and dormant lifeforce, grudgingly supplying him with what he needed. He felt the resentment, the certainty of her opinion, more than once he had advised her to eject him if she really could not abide his plan, but ever faithful, ever loving she capitulated to his pain, produced the materials he needed, watched him build his escape. Watched him destroy everything he had been for the chance of being something different.

Above him another steered their path, unaware of his presence. His old ship kept his secret and played along, darted through space at the command of another. In the bowels of her old and infinite structure he watched the monitors he had set up, silently thanked her for the information she piped to him, watched the adventures unfold above and around him, resisted the urge to interfere or help in any way. That role belonged to another now. The time was soon coming when he would step from the TARDIS forever, having made everything just so, having set the course for the future he would now never see. Soon even the ship’s quiet presence in his mind would be lost to him for the first time in thousands of years. How strange would that feel, to be truly alone. Back in his proverbial confession dial of isolation. No longer physically trapped, freer than he had ever been without the chains of destiny perhaps, but utterly alone if, as in his darkest nightmares, this plan failed.

The Doctor’s future was just around the corner, now hidden to him. It could have been his, but he tore it from his own hands. Whatever happened to the figure at the console, they would continue on in his name. They would be just as much him as he had ever been. Perhaps more, perhaps better; unburdened with grief and the way it had corrupted him, the merest shadows of her existence left in the burned synapses of their memory.

Behind him the teleporter glowed softly in the dark prison cell he had built for himself. Around it a dozen trial and error pieces of equipment, circuitry and experimentation were scattered across the floor. It had taken so long, it had consumed him. But what was a few hundred years when he had already burned four billion? Painstakingly he replicated the device which had held him trapped and reborn in the confession dial. Slowly he pieced together the changes needed, he battled with physics to turn it from pure teleportation device to replicator, to fine tune its ability to copy, and remove its tendency to destroy.

And then one day a hundred years ago he stepped into it not knowing if anything of his alterations had truly worked, but feeling very much like if they had failed he had nothing to lose. The teleporter would finish him, just like it had a billion times before, except this time one way or another there would be escape. Let death take him if it must, because he had tried, he had tried the life without her, he had tried to move on and failed.

He stepped into it, defeated, the tiniest scrap of hope waiting to be burned from his body and then, moments later, he stepped out of it again.

And so did the Other Doctor, from the second chamber across from his.

He remembered standing in the centre of the room and watching himself. Aware the identical copy held every memory he did, had every desire, emotion, need that drove him. That one of them very soon would make the leap for the device placed on the ground between them. Equidistant. Which of them would get it? They were equally as fast, equally determined. It was luck. Blind luck.

Yet both of them knew the consequences, knew how painful it would be for the other. Each of them wanted, and yet didn’t want the future as it was. A future without her, but a future doing what she had told them to do, being the Doctor. He watched his mirror image, the tired eyes of his own broken soul come to rest on the thing between them.

Who would win?

He thought he should take a step forward. He was the original. Or was he? Maybe he was. He was sure the original had stepped into the chamber on the left to be copied. But the man across from him felt original too, felt just as valid, and they both stepped forward at once, then again, and again. Slowly they circled one another and up close he saw himself as he had never seen him. Here was a great man, a powerful being, a vast intellect, a creature who instilled fear and hope in equal measure. Here was an ancient soul, so much still to do. A man who both craved and dreaded that path. Who wished himself free of it, who had no desire to inflict more pain. Just like him.

He circled the Other Doctor, felt their timelines already pulling apart just seconds after his replication. Already he could feel the first differences between them, the tiniest shifts in their motivations and desires but not yet enough for either to make a move. He felt like he was being ripped apart, because he was.

And then as he circled, eye to eye, something inside him made him look past his image, and at hers. The copy of the painting from the Dial, the one he had created from memory and hung over his workstation, just as he had when he had been trapped with the Veil. Her face looked back at him like a ghost over the shoulder of his past self and he knew then, that face was all he needed. No heroics, no more universe bending trickery. He had had enough. He saw her and it was enough.

His Other Self’s gaze had no such picture to light upon and it gave them the tiny separation they needed to react just a little differently. As ever, she drove him to unfathomable lengths, to unforgivable actions. The Doctor dived for the device on the floor, a heartbeat ahead of himself, securing his fate. He watched his own eyes widen in something like horror, felt the Other Doctor’s bony fingers seized his wrist and the full strength of his own body fight with itself. The pair tumbled through the room, the sound of effort and desperation in the air, the knowledge of the plan in both their minds, the desire for it heavy and all consuming, but the fear just as real.

The Doctor was winning. The portrait had started a cascade in him he couldn’t stop and he had the slightest edge, bringing the Other Doctor down, pinning him against the second teleporter, the glow from inside surrounding his silhouette. He glared down at his own features, hungry for the conclusion, slowly, exhaustingly fought the other man’s strength to bring the device to his temple.

‘Wait,’ he heard himself say.

‘We’ve waited long enough,’ the Doctor growled.

‘There’s no turning back,’ he saw the pain in the eyes he looked into, heard the gravel in the throat he held with one hand.

‘One of us will continue,’ he hissed. ‘It isn’t over…’

‘One of us will find her,’ his image said gently. He saw it look past him and knew he had finally seen the portrait. Bracing himself for the surge of renewed fight he was sure would come from his counterpart he pressed the device harder by its temple, ready to fire, but the Other Doctor didn’t even return his gaze.

Something in those eyes had changed as they took in Clara’s features. He knew then how desperate he was, felt the twinges of guilt that this man must feel just the same, began to wonder if this would ever succeed, or if between them there was just too much pain. He relented, just a little. Perhaps they would wrestle like this forever, on the edge of victory, only to be defeated by their own compassion for themselves and the loss they both felt so keenly.

He slumped, it could never work. He had been such a fool. He had hung all hope on this wretched plan and now there were two of them burdened with her loss. He felt his hand slacken and the device moved away from the Other Doctor’s temple. There were tears on both of their cheeks.

For a moment neither moved, lost, uncertain; but it was the man whose eyes has last fallen on Clara’s picture who would change their destiny forever. While the Doctor sat hunched defeated over his own replicated body the Other Doctor, until recently pinned to the teleporter, grasped the device in his hand, taking it from him easily.

‘It’s been a long road, but one of us has to go,’ he said, still looking at the portrait, ‘One of us has a chance to see her again.’ He finally caught the Doctor’s eye again and a kind smile ghosted across his lips. ‘You understand that as well as I do,’ the Other Doctor said, ‘Its how it was all planned. Its just this bit that was left to Fate… because there’s no way of choosing is there? Who carries on, and who finds her? We are same… and there must always be the Doctor, yes?’

‘Yes,’ he said sadly, resignation creeping into his muscles, ‘Always the Doctor, there is no escape from that…’

‘It’s what she wanted,’ his counterpart agreed, ‘Be a Doctor, she said.’

‘Yes,’ slowly he turned his back on himself and looked again at the portrait. If he was the one who had to continue in a world without Clara, he wanted one last look.

‘One of us has to go,’ the Doctor’s voice repeated. ‘One of us has to be the Doctor,’ there was a click, ‘But it isn’t you. Not today.’

He had to fight not to turn around and watch. To turn around and stop himself. The device powered up and he heard his own scream as every neuron associated with Clara burned, but he couldn’t look at what he was doing to himself, he kept his eyes locked with hers.

‘Thank you,’ he told his companion.

It wasn’t the outcome he had expected.

The room was as dark as ever but soon he would leave. The Doctor stood a hundred years on and looked at the spot where the Other had sacrificed himself for his happiness; where his unconscious body had fallen back against the teleporter devoid of what burdened him now. Each memory of her parred away, along with the years spent building and planning. He had dragged the body up to the console room and left it in his chair. When he woke again he would start afresh, carry on, encounter new adventures and new companions and all without the pain. His memory device had worked where Clara’s had failed.

The Original. That’s how he thought of himself now, every inch of painful memory intact. He retreated to his prison cell and bid the TARDIS lock the door behind him; watched on the monitor as his counterpart woke and rubbed his head, momentarily confused before the TARDIS offered a distraction and a new path.

A path that was no longer his to walk.

Because he was waiting. Breathing the cool air of the ship. Losing count of minutes and hours, days and weeks, half hibernating in the darkness.

A hundred years alone was a small price to pay for this chance, and now it was happening.

Around him the TARDIS shuddered and he watched himself cling to the console in the control room above; watched the orange glow consume him. Soon he wouldn’t recognise himself, the difference between him and the Other Doctor would be so great, so apparent, and he would truly be a creature of another time. Released from his prison.

He checked the other monitor, the one that had silently scanned the universe year after year and reported nothing. Nothing until yesterday that is. Now it was slowly coming into view.

Clara’s diner.

It almost hurt to look at, the hope and the anxiety it generated. He had given everything for this. The Doctor leaned forward and focused on the second stolen TARDIS, the light from his regeneration burning ignored on the screen to his right, lighting his features as though he might change any moment. Except he wouldn’t.

That wasn’t his future anymore.

She was.

‘Please,’ he whispered to the dark.

 

 


	2. If The Fates Allow

‘There are tens of thousands of Clara Oswalds floating around time,’ Ashildr leafed sullenly through her latest volume of diary. She was trying very hard not to care, or at least give off any evidence she might. She was trying with every ounce of her immortal body not to show how scared she was. Clara had been acting strangely all day, and there was something different about her. Her hair? Something. Different but familiar. She wished her silly overloaded billion year old memory could figure it out. ‘Thousands upon hundreds upon tens…’ she went on, trying to appear cool.

Clara sighed dramatically, ‘I don’t care. I’m doing this, I need to see…’

‘If an Impossible Girl is needed one will pop up at the appropriate moment,’ came the grumbled, unconvincingly nonchalant reply, ‘I don’t see why we have to hang around waiting…’

‘Because he’s _mine_ ,’ Clara snapped, punching a few buttons on the console, ‘Because this version of him, is mine, always has been. I was there at the start, I will be there at the end.’

She could almost feel Ashildr roll her eyes behind her.

‘He’s no more yours than any of the other versions. You wiped his memory… none of them know who you are,’ the voice behind her sniped bitterly.

 _‘I_ know who he is,’ Clara said softly, refusing to look away from the monitor, ‘That’s what matters.’

‘You’re actually going to go through with this stupid plan aren’t you,’ the diary shut suddenly with a thunk and was cast to one side. Clara’s shoulders tensed.

‘I’m not discussing this again,’ she said.

‘But it’s so pointless!’ Ashildr came into view, hovering urgently to the right of her as the TARDIS span into her eyeline on the screen. When she was in one of these moods she could still pull out teenage Viking and throw a massive tantrum. ‘You have all this time, eternity, millions upon millions of years to do anything you like. Adventures, saving planets, being a Queen, anything, and you choose…’

‘I _choose,_ ’ Clara said simply, ‘That’s the bit you don’t recognise as the important element here. I choose. And I choose this.’

‘Clara you’ve hardly lived!’

‘Its been three hundred years!’ Clara spat back at her. ‘Three hundred years is an awful lot longer than I was ever supposed to be around. I was supposed to wink out of existence back in Trap Street remember? All this…’ she waved her hands vaguely at the TARDIS interior while Ashildr flinched next to her, ‘This, you, the places we’ve been, it’s a bonus at best, it’s cheating at worst. I’m dead. I’m long dead.’

‘Sorry…’

‘Don’t be,’ Clara said levelly.

Ashildr regarded her sadly. ‘Not yet Clara, please. I’ve so much more I can show you, I can make it up to you like I always promised. There’s still so much we can do… Please.. Three hundred and twenty nine years and you think you’ve lived, you’ve hardly begun.’

Clara turned her burning eyes back to the screen. ‘I promised myself this would be how it ended,’ she said, ‘When he moved on. When he died, or regenerated, or stopped being _him_.’

‘But he’s _always_ him!’ Ashildr said exasperated, ‘He changes, he alters but he’s always him. There’s no time limit on the Doctor, Clara.’

‘But he moves on,’ Clara said. ‘Like he should. Like I asked him to. Now he’s finally doing it, he’s letting go. He changes and becomes somebody new, still him, but somebody better. A fresh new version for his future… I want him to do that… but I’m part of his past.’

‘You’re eternal,’ Ashildr said. ‘You’re like me.’

‘No. My echoes are eternal,’ Clara said quietly, ‘Tens of thousands of them you said. Always with him. Me, actual me, real me, I was only ever his,’ he lips curved into a gentle smile. ‘ _My_ grey haired stick insect doctor. Even Chin Boy I only knew for a moment. I met him and he disappeared off to Trenzalore for six hundred and wotsit years. But Eyebrows…’ she laughed, ‘ I watched him appear. God he scared me half to death to start with…. but I helped him find who he was, he was mine. ’

‘He managed four billion years of his existence without you,’ Ashildr commented cruelly,’ That’s even longer than Chin Boy on that planet. You don’t owe him anything. Especially this… this martyrdom..’

‘I was with him every moment in that Dial,’ Clara said. ‘You know that. You know what that did to him. You know what we were. I owe him… everything.’

There was a silence and something heavy within it that Ashildr couldn’t break. She suspected it would feel like guilt if she let it, although the pair never spoke of her actions that day, or of the Raven, or of all she took from the Doctor or Clara. She knew Clara thought of it still, the time they never had, the future she mourned for even now. But Clara had forgiven her and the blame was never dealt. Never by Clara anyway. Ashildr felt it often enough at her own hands. Strange to have Clara even allude to it now, but it showed her just how truly she believed in her actions.

Ever since the day Clara had flown the Diner away from the Doctor she had watched him. Or not so much him, as the trace of him. Two things made it possible. A deal with his TARDIS to monitor and track his life-force from anywhere in the universe, any time or place; and a signal from the sonic she had the TARDIS make him for her, when he was closer. She couldn’t just abandon him, but she couldn’t afford to run into him either. She wasn’t sure she had the willpower or of how effective the memory wipe had been. Something in his eyes that day in the Diner made her suspect that Time Lord memories weren’t so easily unwritten. If they ran into one another again that fragile balance could easily be destroyed and they’d be back where they started, the universe’s most unexpectedly destructive force. The Hybrid. So, a compromise. She had to keep just enough distance, looked out for him when she could, and these devices made that possible.

They also let her check on him from time to time. The little pulse of his signal on the monitor she had set up especially. Always there, in the background, his presence always with her. On one planet then another, then a time stream here and there, zipping about the universe. He settled on earth for quite a number of years she saw, and most recently he was in some massive spaceship, so vast it had worlds within it and distortions of time she’d never come across before. And then yesterday he was at the South Pole. She felt their connection every moment of the way and it was a comfort.

Fort a long time she cast an idle eye over his latest whereabouts and tried not to think too deeply about where and why and with whom. She tried to be content he was alive and well. Resisted the urge to interfere too much. Occasionally tweaked things to help just a little and would be met with a disapproving frown from Ashildr. This week however the signals from the sonic, and the pulse from his lifeforce altered just slightly. Ashildr wouldn’t notice but she did. She noticed everything about him.

He was dying.

Well regenerating. But soon the man she knew would be gone. And that’s when it would be her time to turn the Diner around and head to Gallifrey, a promise she had made herself centuries ago.

When he goes, I go too. It felt right. Necessary. They were the Hybrid, one couldn’t live without the other, together or apart.

On the screen in front of her she watched the TARDIS shudder. In the corner the little signal that was his life-force flickered.

‘It’s started,’ Clara said and slide her hand into the lever on the console before her. Slowly the Diner came to a halt.

 

­­­­­______  ______

 

‘Please,’ he whispered again. The Diner on the screen had stopped spinning and was hovering in the atmosphere of a desert planet close by. ‘Just a little more, just set her down, for a moment. I don’t need long.’

The Doctor bit his lip and watched tensely as the second TARDIS slowed all impulses and came to a total standstill. There she was. Within range. It was nothing short of a miracle. Not knowing whether to be excited or terrified he stood up abruptly from the workstation and glanced back at the teleporter. No longer a replicator, converted once again to purse transportation. One way, due to his inability to build a second chamber at his destination of choice. Once he hit send he would be sent whirling through space to land inside that Diner, somewhere between the booths and the ice-cream selection. Ta-da!

He wiped his palms on his jacket anxiously. That was of course if it all went to plan. He could just end up as millions of tiny atoms floating aimlessly disjointed around the planet’s atmosphere. No. No he had to be positive about this. He had run the sequences a thousand times. It would work. But only once. He should check again. Line up those co-ordinates. He didn’t want to materialise half inside half out, or worse as part of the neon sign above the door, his existence forever blighted by being part man part luminous pink Diner sign.

He ran the co-ordinates again.

‘Ok…. Ok….’

The TARDIS around him shuddered and he glanced at the screen which fed the footage back from the console room and beyond. The burning orange light of his regeneration was finally fading. Silence was falling over the scene before him. He looked a lot smaller than he used to be.

The Doctor peered at the screen and cocked his owlish head to one side.

‘Well I never…’ he mused and a strange chuckle rose from him. On the screen his alternate future self had well and truly transformed in ways he hadn’t predicted at all. He watched his ring fall from her hand and glanced down at the one that still shone on his finger. ‘Huh… something tells me Missy would have loved this.’

He flexed his hand and the ring stayed on. Still him. Now the only him. The other him was a her. He wasn’t sure why but that made all this slightly easier.

‘Good luck, Doctor,’ he said and just for a moment he though he saw her glance up at him. His hearts leapt. She couldn’t know, right? He’d wiped her memories years ago, there was no way she could…

Another shudder and he was forced to focus on the matter at hand. Memories or not, the new him… her … she… was in control of that particular timeline and he could only let her…

‘Wait.. no… no… not that button!’ he cried out.

The TARDIS doors flew open and the whole ship tipped. He could see warning messages flash up on the console room screens and then suddenly the feed went dead. Around him sparks flew around his prison cell and the whole integrity of the dark lost room shook violently.

‘Why do I always do this?’ he yelled above the din, ‘I can never just leave the damn thing alone, I have to have a go.. have to hit some buttons when I can’t remember a damn thing I’m doing yet… when I can’t drive… stupid Doctor… muddled regenerated Doctor… you never learn…’

He dived for the teleporter. No time to recheck the co-ordinates. The monitors dead he had to hope the Diner was exactly where it had been moments ago.

An explosion above him and the smell of fire.

He had to get out of here.

The Doctor slid the teleporter doors shut and grabbed the handle on the inside, the lever he had marked ‘Pull to Exit.’ He took one last glance around the TARDIS and pulled with all his strength.

‘Goodbye old girl…. Be kind to her… Good luck.’

 

_____ ______

Clara turned the monitor off. The one that had been on for the last three hundred years. The image of the burning TARDIS was still painfully raw, but she had seen the New Doctor, ejected, falling. It was traumatic on multiple levels. Behind her Ashildr was fiddling with the controls to their ship.

‘He’s alive,’ she said, ‘I mean the fall doesn’t kill him.’

‘I know,’ Clara said.

‘How?’ You turned the screen off when it got to the good bit.’

‘I just know. And it’s she… by the way… he’s… a she.’ She raised her eyebrows a tad bemused. ‘Didn’t see that one coming.’

‘She’s cute,’ Ashildr said tuning the monitor by her side like an old fashioned analogue tv.

Clara allowed herself a small smile. ‘You would say that.’

‘She _is_.. she’s blonde… and well she’s a woman. I think this particular regeneration has all sorts of potential.’ She grinned suddenly sure she could rally her friend. ‘Come on Clara… look at us, look at her, what a new beginning… what a future! You don’t really intend to…’

‘I intend to,’ Clara said quietly her smile first resolute then vanishing, ‘And I will….’ She yanked the lever on the console and the TARDIS engines fired. ‘Right now.’

‘But!’

‘Gallifrey here we come…’ The ship began to dematerialise, leaving the desert planet’s atmosphere behind.

‘Clara, please don’t…’ Ashildr started and then she caught her companion’s eye as she turned to look at her and realised for the first time… grey top… lace trim… black trousers. She had dressed to go back, to step before the Raven. Nothing would stop her now, the look in her eyes was too determined.

‘My Doctor’s time is over,’ Clara said beneath the noise of the engines. ‘It’s time I was over too.’

 

_____ _____

 

‘Clara!’

The Doctor’s voice was drowned by the searing winds around him. He was falling and there was nobody to catch him. All he could do was call her name and wait for his fall to end. Somewhere far below, an empty world awaited his arrival, alive or dead.

The Diner was gone, and with it, the last of his hope.

 

 


	3. The Desert

 

The nights were as long as days and the days brief and painful. The searing heat of noon made everything impossible. The ground too hot to stand on, the rocks too hot to shelter by, the heat radiating from them like massive generators. He couldn’t move when the sun was at its highest, the air thick with sand, his surroundings burning him like layers of superheated bandage wrapped around his wasting body. He relied on caves, crevices and make shift shelters. The sun beating down around him and the grit on the wind grazing his skin if he dared to poke his head above the edge. The days were torture, sweat rolling from his pores, sand sticking to him, coating his eyelashes, scratching his eyes. His tried his best to cover himself, but over time the elements tore at his clothing. He was a rag and bone person huddled in the cracks of the earth praying for darkness.

When darkness came it brought the cold. At first such a relief but so rapidly a different kind of pain. The sweat drenched jacket he wore now froze against his skin. He was blistered with frostbite, even his natural tendency to cooler body temperature was defeated by the unnatural environment. A thousand needles of ice pricked him, his blood froze at his fingertips, the moisture from his eyes crystalised and burned. He shuddered, the little energy he had employed in trying to keep warm. Slowly he would feel the centre of him freeze. A hard rock of ice in his guts. Sometime he forced himself to keep moving. A battle against blizzards which swirled and tore at his skin in the pitch black. Sometimes there was sufficient light from the two moons above to see his way, but usually the snow blocked his sight.

By morning it was gone. Instantly melted by the rising searing sun. A dying sun, too large and too close and too hot. The elements switched back and forth, leaving no trace. Now burning, now frozen. Nothing lived. No plants, no creatures. Only him. If living was the right expression.

Time Lords can hibernate. Place themselves in comas for healing or for the simple passage of time. Once in a sarcophagus beneath the sea the Doctor had waited one hundred and fifty years to be discovered by himself and Clara and brought back to life. He knew he had the ability to shut himself down and wait.

But he couldn’t.

This planet had no future. One day that sun would die. Nothing grew here. No lifeforms passed by. If he had cruised overhead in his TARDIS he would have taken one look at the barren desert and moved on to somewhere more welcoming. Nobody would ever set foot here. He would never be found.

And he would never find Clara.

She was still out there somewhere. Jetting around in the Diner he had missed by nanoseconds. He had fallen through the space she had been even as the final dematerialisation of her ship faded from view and he had kept falling. Down and down. Crashing to the ground beneath in the dead of night. In the drifts of snow the atmosphere had dumped. If it had been day he would not have survived, crashed straight into rock, but the nights here, freezing and hospitable provided that at least, a soft landing.

Weeks, months exploring patiently when the temperature allowed. There had to be something. He went from hoping for civilisation to much more basic wants. A water supply, some primitive vegetation, shelter. Something. He was injured and hurting and though Time Lord bodies have amazing healing power, incredible durability in harsh conditions, they still need fuel.

There was none. Nothing. Nothing to eat. Only snow for moisture. His steps grew slower, his thoughts less active. He had fewer hopes, ideas and plans. He couldn’t see a way out. He scanned the environment again and again with the sonic, found somewhere to hide from the sun, and moved on again each night with heavy tread.

He stopped counting days, it was torment in itself. He stopped counting and just tried to survive each one. Rapidly getting to the point where he was too weak to keep searching he decided at last he had no option but to stop. On a final journey he located a likely looking cave. One that would protect him from the worst of the heat and the hardest of the blizzards. There under moonlight he half crawled into the shelter and drew the remains of his jacket around him tight, his pale skin visible in shreds over his arms and shoulders.

So this was where the Doctor would end. In a hidden cave on a lost planet. Somewhere above him the next version of himself was already engaged in new adventures. He imagined the petite blonde at the controls of his TARDIS, unaware her past self wasted away alone. He remembered again the way she had looked at the monitor, had she known her was there? Did she remember his plan? Their plan? Did she think he had succeeded? In her mind was he ticked away on Clara’s Diner living a version of their life she’d never see? Was she envious?

He laughed painful. Envious, Oh she would have no reason for that. He had played with time and their destiny and now he paid the price. There is room for only one Doctor in this Universe. And it wasn’t him. Not anymore. Never mess with timelines, no matter how desperate or how good your intentions. It never works.

He flicked on the sonic and illuminated his cave. Dark stone, very dark, even in the blue light of the device it looked black. It shone in laces, almost like granite, tiny flecks of what? A glass? A crystal? Maybe a metal. His tiring mind debated idly. He was in a tome. A ready made granite tome. Perhaps even some sort of precious metal ran through the rocks, a vein of silver or…

He scanned out of curiosity and squinted with blurred visions at the results. Yes, silver, and oh… a type of diamond. `A hard element almost like the Confession Dial. How ironic. Some precious stones deeper in the walls, some rarer compound metals, a sheen of radioactivity here and there.

He turned the sonic off. Outside he could hear the blizzard winds rising.

He flicked it on again and peered at the final readings.

Radthorpium.

Rare and alien.

And… useful.

He Doctor pin pointed the deposit on the far side of the cave. At least a couple of kilos embedded in the rock. It was deep but if he used the sonic he could excavate his way to it. Maybe…

Perhaps he was feverish. Or perhaps just in desperate need for something to occupy his dying mind. A final attempt at making contact was possible, a final cry for help. He had tried of course when he first crashed here but so far out in space a standard signal didn’t travel far enough. But the sonic could use the deposit to magnify a distress signal, the drawback being it would likely only be heard by one kind of receiver. Radthorpium was an element only known to certain civilisations. To use it to magnify the sonics distress signal would mean it could only be picked up by…

‘Let’s hope you’re listening Old Girl,’ he muttered as he began to drag himself across the cave floor. ‘And that your new boss doesn’t mind a detour….’

He changed the settings on the sonic and laid it carefully against the wall. He had to be gentle, he needed as much radthorpium as possible and it was friable stuff. Too enthusiastic with the removal of the rock layers above it and he would lose precious deposit. He knew by the stars he was on the very edge of a major galaxy, a billion miles from pockets of civilisation. That signal needed to really travel far.

Painstakingly he began to peel away rock, his hands absolutely numb with cold, white and frozen. The ring he wore was slack where his fingers had grown so thin. It spun now in the light of the sonic, the green stone catching the blue sheen, everything now cold and harsh. It would take weeks but he would keep going. It was something to hang on to. He didn’t doubt for a moment if his Other self saw the signal they would come. He would have after all. Night would turn briefly to day and his hands would thaw, his work might speed up a moment before the heat sapped him of energy. He slumped against the rock, its surface just a modicum cooler, watched the light twinkle more warmly in the deposits, tiny flecks of gold which by night turned silver.

He started to count the days again.

But it was killing him. Depriving him of the very last of his strength. When this task was complete he would have no option but to shut down. Set up the sonic to try and call for help and then force himself into hibernation and wait. If he didn’t… if he didn’t it wouldn’t matter if the signal got through, he’d be dead by the time the TARDIS reached him. Dead, not regenerated. He had gone too far for that. There was nothing left of him to work with, the last dregs of life force couldn’t reanimate a body as emaciated as his. He had slowed every system to barely functioning. He was hardly alive. His double heart beat at best once a minute. He hardly breathed. His major organs halted their chemical reactions, he was toxic and weak. No he had to freeze himself in time or die.

And if nobody answered he would die anyway. But at least he would be unaware. The nagging hunger and frozen body would cease to torture him. He would simply slip away.

As he chipped away he began to realise that a least part of him hungered for that. To just give up. To just lose, just this once. And maybe another Doctor might have, one who didn’t remember.

_Get off your arse, and win._

Clara. She would never forgive him if he gave up now. Because he had done this all for her. Because her existence was the one thing that kept him going. Because somewhere out there still there was Diner in Space.

Because maybe, just maybe that Diner might hear the signal.

 

______ ______

 

In the TARDIS repair shop of Gallifrey the workers had to scatter as an early model crashed ungainfully into the bay and skidded to a halt against the far wall. For a moment it steamed and sparked, long enough for the mechanics and technicians to pick themselves up and start gesticulating . From the console room Clara watched on the monitor.

‘I guess I’ll have to pay for the damage somehow,’ she said distantly.

‘Better hope you didn’t squash someone,’ Ashildr was pulling herself up off the ground where the hard landing had knocked her sideways moments before.

‘There’s this thing called regeneration…’ Clara reassured her.

‘Does that work if you’re flat?’

‘I’m sure they are all fine, it can’t be the first rogue TARDIS they’ve had arrive.’

‘Usually they’re rogue TARDISes are busy leaving not coming back… look… Clara… it’s not too late.’

Clara turned to face her and suddenly Ashildr knew that it was exactly that, too late. She didn’t seem angry, she wasn’t stridently defending her decision, she just seemed, serene.

‘I need to do this,’ Clara said softly. ‘I’m ready and it’s time. He’s gone. My Doctor… please understand…’

Over the billions of years of her existence Ashildr had lost more than even Clara could understand, and for a long time she had stopped loving because of it. She had seen the darker side of life because she had refused to live for fear of loss. Part of her didn’t want that for her friend, the difficulties that came with unnaturally long life, with immortality. She didn’t want to lose Clara too, but she didn’t want that pain for her friend.

‘We had fun, didn’t we?’ Ashildr said.

‘We did,’ Clara smiled.

Ashildr blinked and looked around the TARDIS, ‘Clara I…’

‘Don’t watch…’ Clara said, ‘I need to do it alone.’

She reached to squeeze her friend’s hand then quickly turned and left. For a moment Ashildr gazed tearfully at the space she had occupied.

‘You weren’t alone,’ she said quietly, ‘He never left you.’

Behind her, the Lifeforce Display monitor tied to the sonic, flickered on once again. It had been dormant since Clara had made her decision to travel back to Gallifrey. Now the Diner no longer tracked the TARDIS and since the Doctor’s regeneration and his life force had changed to that of the new Doctor, subtly different, but distinct. It glowed strongly on Earth to the top of the picture.

But if Clara had been looking at the screen she would have seen a galaxy half a universe away, and on the edge of it a tiny blue signal, just enough to trigger the TARDIS monitoring system. It was a signal she would recognise, a life-force trace that could only have been his. It beat slowly, in time with the Doctor’s heartbeat, so slow you could miss it if you weren’t watching.

And nobody was.


	4. Love Hard, Run Fast

 

Clara had seen a lot of odd things in three centuries but watching the Time Lords open up a hole in time at her request was one of the strangest. Not because of the time and space elements; she had long got used to hopping around in time lines, emerging in past and present half way across galaxies and far from home. Rather this was a surreal experience looking as she was at the site of her own death.

Her impending death.

That had already happened.

Standing by the control point she gnawed at her thumb nervously, feeling more human, more vulnerable than she had for years. Clara didn’t get hurt anymore. She didn’t get sick. She was impervious. And yet here she was , willingly about to end things. On the one hand, what a privilege to choose the time to do so, if not the means. On the other, nobody really wants to die…. Do they?

She couldn’t get Ashildr out of her head. Maybe she was right? From her perspective Clara had barely started.

She had been so certain, it was right, and now it was real it seemed…. wrong. Looking back at that street, as it emerged from the clouds of time painstakingly slowly, made it real. She felt young. She was young, technically. She didn’t’ want to die then, so now?

To one side of her two technicians coaxed the rift open while to the other, the General watched over proceedings, or more accurately, she watched over Clara’s face.

‘You are certain?’ she asked.

Without glancing up Clara muttered into her thumb, her sleeve pulled over her hand.

‘Yes.’

For all her extra years alive, she felt about twelve. The being next to her probably had a few centuries on her, maybe a millennia or two. She could read her anxiety and her doubt. It showed in Clara just as the Generals wisdom showed in her. Not in her face, but in her eyes.

Time Lord eyes. A different colour, but then, his eyes had once been brown hadn’t they. And green, and blue, and grey. She wondered what they were now. It didn’t much matter, they all had the same quality to them; stars in their depths, if you took the time to look.

So many didn’t.

She felt a tear escape and hastily wiped it away with her sleeve.

‘Sure.’

The heavy gaze of the General didn’t flinch. ‘Are you really?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why are you crying?’

Finally Clara looked at her. ‘You may not have noticed but I’m about to die.’

‘Death holds no fear here,’ the General said kindly.

_It’s like the flu._

Oh Doctor.

‘Maybe not for you,’ Clara looked back at the rift and watched Trap Street emerge slowly in front of her. ‘You get to come back.’

‘So apparently... do you.’

‘That was a one off.’

The General smiled to herself, ‘Believe me… it’s becoming a habit.’

Clara glanced at her quickly. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It wouldn’t be for me to say,’ the woman said evasively and then nodded curtly to the rift, ‘ I believe we are almost ready… if you remain certain.’

‘Why do you keep asking that?’

‘It’s a big decision,’ the General said simply, ‘and you may feel differently about it now it’s here.’

‘I always said I’d go back. It’s a fixed point in time, it has to be done.’

‘A fixed point in time…’ the General repeated deliberately.

Clara frowned, ‘Yes… that’s how these things work, you’re the Time Lord, mess with fixed points and bad things start happening. Consequences…’

The General stretched onto her toes and then rocked back. Making an mmming’ sound she kept her focus on the rift. It was exasperating. Time Lords spent their entire lives banging on about Fixed Points and Consequences and educating pudding brains and then when it came to it they went their own direction regardless.

Well he did anyway.

Maybe she could learn from him?

No. No, this had to happen. She couldn’t live forever.

‘I won’t change my mind, ‘Clara said defiantly, ‘The Doctor is gone, and as such I made a promise…’

‘To whom? To him?’

‘No… I just…’

‘You have time, Clara Oswald…’

‘I’ve had enough time.’

In front of her the rift finally clarified and she saw the length of Trap Street, the darkness, the Raven frozen, suspended in mid air just short of where she would soon stand, and beyond that, by the doorway she had stepped from three hundred years before… a figure.

‘There is never enough time…’ the General said quietly.

He looked so alone.

‘He… he watched…’ Clara said.

She turned to the General.

‘He watched? He was there? He watched me?’

‘Did you think he would leave?’

‘I told him… I asked him to stay behind, I said I had to do it by myself! The stupid, stubborn… why did he do that to himself?’

‘Why? Why do you think? And besides….When does the Doctor ever do what he is told?’

Clara turned desperately back to the rift suddenly uncertain. He was right there, she could walk a hundred paces and she could touch him. He’d never know, frozen in time, he’d never even know she’d come back like this. He’d never hear her say goodbye.

‘I…’

‘Still sure?’ the General said.

 

­­­­______ ______

 

She’d never been very good at crying. It wasn’t a particularly Viking friendly thing to be seen doing and after a few hundred years of endless miserable existence Asjildr had more or less given up the habit.

Losing all your children to plague does that.

Her TARDIS whirred and offered her some tissues. The monitor blinked once, slowly.

‘I can’t believe I’m stuck here now with you,’ Ashildr said by way of thanks and there was a slow whirr of empathy despite the harsh words. There was too much grief coming off the girl for a psychic box to ignore. ‘why is she doing this? Her and her stupid, childish morals. She hasn’t lived long enough. If she had a few more hundred years on her she’d see but…’

She blew her nose and reach round for another tissue.

‘Why are you blinking at me?’

The little light on the monitor pulsed again, once.

‘What is that? You’d better no go faulty, Clara was the sensible one, the one who knew her way round a screwdriver, if somethings wrong… well I guess we’re in Gallifrey. Go see one of your own. I’m done with this.’

Blink.

‘What?!’

Sniffling she hopped down from her seat and slouched over to the monitor. In true DIY fashion she hit the edge with the palm of her hand. It shuddered and… blinked again. Ashildr rolled her eyes.

‘You’re wonky aren’t you? Look at this! This is really not the time, Clara’s about to throw herself in front of that stupid Shade and you’re telling me there’s two signals from…’

She stopped, her eyes going wide.

‘Wait that’s…’

Blink. Blink.

Ashildr traced one signal’s path with the tip of her finger. The regenerated Doctor, roughly where she would expect her to be, doing roughly what she expected new Doctors do, sitting about on earth, and then about as far away as possible, in a corner of the galaxy nobody with any sense ever went to…’

‘That’s…. oh my god… no… Clara….’

She ran.

 

______ ______

She had to do it. She had to do it. And now here she was, the very tip of the Shade’s beak brushing her jumper, just over her heart. She was in every way identical to the day she had died. She never aged, she never changed. Even her cheeks were wet with tears. But they weren’t the same. They were no longer tears caused by the proximity of death.

She’d gone to him. She couldn’t help herself. Backtracked down Trap Street where a younger identical different ‘Clara’ had walked moments before. Stopped by his frozen figure, read the horror on his face close up. The horror and the grief and helplessness. Read the guilt in his eyes and the simmering anger which would grow and burn. Suddenly she knew better than ever why it had taken four billion years. Suddenly she saw why he had never given up.

She touched him and he was warm. As though he was just holding his breath, playing a game. He would blink and smile at her at any moment. Laugh and grab her hand, run with her to the TARDIS. Escape.

Like they had three hundred years before.

She thought twice. Wondered if she was wrong. To leave again. To complete the circle.

To kiss those lips.

But she couldn’t stop.

Motionless he stood against her as she leaned up and pressed her mouth to his, then as her face buried itself in his silly velvet doctor coat. She tightened her arms around his middle and he didn’t move. And it made her mind up forever.

He was gone. The closest she would ever get to him again was death.

Clara stepped back sadly. He was there but he wasn’t. She was out of place and out of time. She didn’t belong here. Slowly her arms fell from him and turning she walked back to her spot.

She took a breath and close her eyes for a moment, then looking ahead she focused on the technicians beyond the rift and nodded once.

‘Do it,’ she said.

There was some activity at the console and she felt the rift pulse around her once. It was coming. Time would start again to move. She had seconds maybe and then everything would be over. She didn’t remember it. It hadn’t happened. And yet it had. It was the first time all over again, and the last.

‘Let me be brave.’

‘Clara! He’s alive, the Doctor, he’s alive, something… I don’t… Clara no!’

The rift pulsed again and the Shade crackled. Clara looked down into the pits of its face where eyes should have glinted and saw darkness and then…

‘Clara!’ The impact hit her heard from the right as the glimmer of life returned to the Shade. It dived past her and out of the corner of her eye she saw the technicians rush to slam on the brakes of their devices. Clara rolled, Ashildr still clinging to her waist, the hard cobbles bruising her back, in time to see the Raven dive towards where the Doctor had stood behind her. He had seen, even in that tiny moment he had seen enough for the light to change in his eyes, his posture to change just a little.

Everything would change.

The rift froze again at the command of the General and she heard shouting from the control room. Painfully she finally slammed to a halt with Ashildr scrabbling to get free, reach for her hand.

‘What are you…?

‘He’s not dead. Something’s gone wrong with the regeneration. There are two life force signals,.. and … look we don’t have time… we need to g…’

‘What are you talking about?’

Clara scrambled up, dust over her leggings a rip in her jumper. She looked in horror at the Frozen Shade moments from the Doctor.

‘I don’t understand, but she does, the TARDIS,’ she forced me to look… there’s a life force… but it’s weak… and its really far away… and…. Clara! Come on.’

She couldn’t move.

‘He isn’t… he didn’t?’

‘He did…. I mean the other him… her… she’s there too… somewhere… I… Clara… you can’t die now! Clara he needs you… _your_ Doctor needs you.’

Bewildered Clara glanced between the control room and the Doctor, down at herself.

‘But… it’s time….’

There was a crack above them. Like thunder, like the end of worlds.

‘What …’ Ashildr’s face turned up, eyes full of panic. Instinctively Clara pulled her closer. In the dark sky above Trap Street something terrible was happening. Something the Time Lords were all too familiar with. There was a shriek of panic ahead of them and from the chaos the General stepped forward.

‘Move… now….’

‘What’s happening?’

There was a flash of green blue lights and a tearing sound that threatened to crush them. Clara staggered back her hands over her ears just to be deafened again but the high pitched sound now ripping from the sky. She peered up into it, her whole body trembling as she saw the clouds tear open.

Reapers.

The first talons on the edges of the rift.

Reapers.

‘Clara!’ Ashildr on her knees with the sound, tears streaming down her face with the pain of it.

Slowly Clara lowered her hands, suddenly the noise didn’t seem to touch her. But the sight of them did. Slowly more and more of them revealed themselves, Their wings, tipped with claws, pulling them through the tiny gap, slithering until it parted ways wide enough to heave their bodies through.

‘Oh God…’

‘Reapers!’ the General shouted.

Clara clutched at Ashildr’s wrists and half dragged her up, ‘Move! Move!’

‘What’s happening?!’

‘They can handle it, The Time Lords,’ she pulled her friend down the little street, pushing technicians out the way, racing for her TARDIS, trust me they’ve done it before. This… this is what happens when you mess with time.’

‘All we did was hit pause again! I don’t understand!’

They reached the Diner and Clara bundled Ashildr back inside.

‘No!’ she said slamming the door and running to the console,’ No we haven’t, we’ve disrupted the Timeline. He saw you, he saw us. Everything has changed. Potentially it’s all changed. The confession dial, Gallifrey, all of it what if it never happens?’

She slammed the diner into drive and the pistons screamed in protest. The ship tore from Gallifrey and raced not nowhere. Clara spun and grabbed the monitor urgently.

‘Show me…. Show me now!’

‘Clara… wait.’

‘Don’t tell me to wait!’ she snapped at Ashildr hard. ‘You told me he was alive! What if this changed it all, what if he’s gone! What if..?’

Ashildr’s hand snaked around her and pointed to the screen.

‘What? There’s nothing? There’s nothing there? What if we blew this?’ Clara’s voice grew increasingly painful, ‘What if he’s gone again… I can’t…’

Blink.

She stopped suddenly.

‘He’s there, ‘Ashildr said softly.

Slowly the last of Clara’s tears ran down her cheek. Lifting one hand to the screen she gently traced the slow pulse of light that came from the Doctor’s signal waiting to feel his next heartbeat.

Blink.

‘I’ll be right there,’ she whispered.


	5. Be Brave

Journeys in a TARDIS don’t take long. A few moments and you’re a thousand years back in time. A few more and it’s a billion. Distance means nothing. Blink and you’re there.

Blink.

Clara’s eyes were fixed on the screen.

Blink.

Soft and slow. Fainter than she had ever seen it. Even as she watched it seem to grow dimmer. That’s what worried her most. There was always a time delay on these things. A TARDIS was instant. But a tracer signal wasn’t. This signal could be seconds, minutes, hours old. Even days depending on how it was being transmitted. She’d never seen it come from so far out. How was he even doing that? It had to be conscious. A cry for help. The sonic would never normal transmit anything powerful enough to reach them in Gallifrey, in a pocket universe shielded from the other. God she just wanted to land. Why hadn’t they bloody landed yet?

Reluctantly she took her eyes away from the screen just for a moment, checked a separate monitor.

‘What the hell is going on out there?’ she asked.

Ashildr, on the other side of the console, glanced up.

‘I don’t know. It’s like she doesn’t want to touch down. Like she’s… dancing about, weaving around…’ she banged her own screen hard, ‘Come on you stupid cow, land!’

The TARDIS groaned.

‘She would if she could…’ Clara said, ‘What’s the problem? Show us.’

A beat and the monitor flickered. Dark skies speckles with stars and the planet below them where the Doctors signal was fading. There seemed to be a snow storm, but that didn’t explain the ship’s reluctance. She didn’t shy away from a snowflake or three… billion.

Clara frowned, about to hit manual override and then she saw it. A pulse just to the west of them, lower down in the atmosphere but an all too familiar streak of colour in the skyline. Green and blue… and ripping apart.

‘Oh no….’

‘Clara?’

‘Shit, no!’

She grabbed for the controls.

‘Sorry but I’m taking over!’

Above her the piston squealed in resistance but not before she had overridden the system. She felt the TARDIS tugging against her, physically under her fingers and mentally trying to beat her back, change her mind.

‘No, I need to do this…’ she grunted with effort.

‘Clara what are doing?’ Ashildr held fast to the console as she ship tilted.

‘Reapers! They are down there too. We messed with his Time line as well as mine remember, they’re after him… God knows he’s probably done a few things to get them pissed off…’

Ashildr to her credit stopped wrestling with her side of the console and half skidded half fell around Clara’s side. Together they pulled on the levers, their joint weight and strength versus the complaining TARDIS.

‘Just… do… as you are… told.’ Ashildr commanded through gritted teeth.

With a wrenching grinding sound and an almighty shudder the ship suddenly dived. Refusing outright to dematerialise, the two girls had no choice but to force her down manually, hurtling through the atmosphere and down towards what looked alarmingly like rocks.

‘We need to slow down!’ Ashildr shouted above the racket.

‘No, we need to get there quicker! We need to take them by surprise! We can’t wander about trying to find a soft landing now….’

Faster and faster they plunged the engines whirling louder and Ashildr was sure for a moment they were going to finally die, immortal or not, when she felt the TARDIS pull with all her might and the levers flew from their hands. There was a crash, sparks flew and the whole ship came to a catastrophic and sudden halt.

In the brief pause that followed Clara rolled slowly onto her back. Above her the white ceiling seem suddenly too dark and the roundels too bright. They blurred and dazzled her while they pulsed randomly. She heard the great machine groan and steam erupted from the console.

‘I think… I think I broke her…’ she muttered.

‘She’s going to hate you forever…’ Ashildr coughed from the other side of the console room.

Behind her the doors banged open forcefully and a chilling gale blasted into the room. Beyond, Clara could see the shattered glass of her diner and a devastated mess of scattered cutlery and food. It was already almost covered with snow. The doors banged again meaningfully.

‘I think she wants us to leave,’ Ashildr said.

 

______ ______

 

Reapers. Why in Rassilon’s name were there Reapers cropping up on the godforsaken planet now? The Doctor, half curled around the Radthorpium plinth he had created over the weeks, dragged himself to the back of it and prayed he could muster a few more seconds of signal. In the centre of the excavated element he had created a depression and inserted the screwdriver, illuminated end upwards, in order to magnify the beams. The snow had largely covered his limbs and he was frozen almost solid but he had been refusing shelter and focused instead on the transmission.

But something was happening.

Why Reapers? Why now?

His best guess was that something had happened in his Time Line. Maybe he had done something. He kept trying to think but he couldn’t focus. Was anything different? A different memory?

Regardless… Was it coincidence that this something happened not long after he started transmitting at the longest frequency he had managed to find yet.

He thought not. If Reapers were en route maybe someone else was too.

But he could really do without those scaled devourers ruining his very carefully planned and crucial plan, If someone had realised he was here, he really needed them to show up. Round about now would be good. Any minute. Please.

There was an ominous rumble from the sky.

‘Oh… that’s bad… that’s’ very bad…’ he tried to scramble behind the plinth a little more. There wasn’t a lot of him that needed hiding now but he was pretty certain those things had sharp eyes. And those eyes were emerging through the rift just ahead of him.

So were the claws.

He glanced up again at the transmitting sonic. They’d hone in on that in seconds and when they did…

… but he need it to…

… no he had to take it down. They’d kill him. He had to hide. Did he …

… maybe he could leave it on….

… but a weapon…

He couldn’t think. God he couldn’t think He was so tired and so cold. So broken. He could hardly move. He could no longer reason or calculate the odds, he didn’t know what to do. Why didn’t he know what to do?

When in doubt run.

But he couldn’t even do that. He hadn’t come this far for this had he?

And then he realised at the final moment the time for choice was gone. The world shook and a triumphant scream from the throat of the beast told him.

They were here.

 

________ ________

 

Clara stumbled out into the snow rapidly followed by an ungainly Ashildr as she tried to bundle herself in a hastily grabbed coat.

‘Why are you never cold?’ she complained.

‘I’m never anything,’ Clara said squinting as well as she could through the blizzard for any signs of life. ‘You know that.’

‘Its weird. I know you’re in …. Stasis … or whatever but nothing ever changes? Nothing? Not too hot or too cold? You don’t get tired, you’re never hungry.’

‘We’ve been through this….’ Clara took a few steps forward and then from her pocket extracted her own screwdriver. ‘Where are you?’ She scanned the planet.

‘I know, I know… sorry,’ Ashildr clumped up beside her, ‘Its just… well even here… it’s about fifty below at least…. How can you still be…’

‘Shut up will you,’ Clara said calmly. Calm was a bad sign. She had that focused thing going on. That, we need to do this or die air that always gave Ashildr chills. Clara was a control freak. And boy could she do controlled. When she needed to, since her ‘death’, she was sure her friend could put her feelings into stasis along with ever other bodily function.

The gale howled for a moment before Clara started pushing forward, a tiny figure in a plain thin top and leggings. She was covered in snow. Her clothes were freezing already in the blizzard but under them she remained warm, untouched. And she had caught the scent. The light of the sonic seemed to guide her like a lantern.

‘This way…. Come on…’

‘Not so fast!’ Ashildr stumbled after her, half falling, half dragging herself though the increasing drifts. God it could snow in this place. How fast was this stuff laying?

‘Its so deep!’ she shouted.

‘Sonic says its only been snowing an hour,’

‘There’s feet of it! Why didn’t I grow more!’

‘Because you’re a tiny midget Viking whose sole reason for being is to make me feel tall,’ Clara turned briefly and flashed her a smile. It was the strangest thing as they ploughed through the drifts in the pitch black. That eerie bright smile on a dead alien planet. They were alone, and there were Reapers and… Clara looked happy.

‘He’s here…. I feel him…’ she said glassy eyed.

‘What?’

‘I just… I know…’ Clara said.

‘Are you ok? You look… Clara slow down!’

But she was off, half skipping against the elements, the wind nothing to her, the snow a minor inconvenience. She was scrabbling down a bank and kicking drifts aside, weaving and finding balance, her clothes soaked and stiff with ice.

‘He’s here, he’s close… I can almost hear him he’s so close… I…’

She stopped suddenly and Ashildr head down to shield her eyes slammed straight into the back of her.

‘What the…? Hear him? Clara! For God’s sake!’

‘Look,’ came the reply. Clara pointed the light of the sonic down into a deep footstep.

There was blood at the bottom of it. And a tiny scrap of material poking through the ice.

Ashildr felt suddenly pale.

‘Is that…?’

‘It’s his… its Time Lord… see.. its orangey in the light… their blood is…’

‘Stop it!’

‘It’s his.’

Clara looked up into the blizzard and cast the light of the sonic around her briefly.

‘Where did the Reapers go?’ she asked quietly as the wind around them seemed to die.

‘I…’ Ashildr looked around her suddenly. ‘I don’t…. that’s weird they were here, I mean we saw the rifts.’

‘Then where are they? Where are the rifts?’

‘Gone?’ she shrugged, ‘Isn’t that a good thing?’

‘Not really no.’

‘Why not? Personally I didn’t want to run into one of those things… hey is it getting light?’

Clara stood motionless by the bloodstain. It was indeed getting light. The wind and snow were fading and the sky was turning orange.

Like the blood, she thought. Like a whole sky of his blood. The Reapers must have attacked at the same time she had unleashed them in Trap Street. They weren’t exactly ones for hanging around. Efficient, the Doctor had once called them, efficient things with one purpose in mind. Clean up the time line, dispatch the thing that shouldn’t be there. Even in the few minutes it had taken for her to override the TARDIS and land, they had arrived. Arrived and done their job.

‘Clara will you talk to me what’s happening?’

‘They’ve been and gone…. And I think they took him.’

‘Took him?’

Clara turned off the sonic and felt the first hot rays of the rising sun on her face. To one side she saw two falling moons dipping behind some rocks, and within them a cave.

‘I think he was here… I know he was here…. But I think we got here too late.’ She frowned, a headache forming. That was weird in itself. She didn’t get headaches now. She hadn’t had one in three hundred years.

‘No…’ Ashildr clambered around the suddenly melting snowdrift to face her, ‘ No you said he was here, that you could feel him. Hear him, you said. Try again. I don’t understand why you can do it but…. Try again. Listen for him.’

‘It’s called wishful thinking… he was the psychic not me… he could… oh my god…’

Clara’s eyes went wide. Fumbling she switched on the screwdriver again and tried to trace the signal she had seen in the TRDAIS. It was gone. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t transmitting.

‘He’s broadcasting,’ she said suddenly, ‘He’s using his mind. That’s a thing right? I mean he’s psychic… but he told me it was only by touch… how is he…’

‘Doesn’t matter… listen!’

‘The Reapers came and he had to hide but he’s…. he’s here… he’s here…’

‘Concentrate! Where is he?’

Clara shut her eyes tight and willed him into her mind. Come on you daft old man, do it again. Where are you? I came all this way. Just tell me where you are, tell me now, tell me… she gasped. Her breath wouldn’t enter her body. Not that she needed it, not that she breathed anymore, but the old reflex was the same. She had seen him and she knew, she knew exactly where he was. Without warning she ran, down over rough paths that wended their way to the cave. The snow around them forming rivers, then vanishing as mist. The sun growing higher so that its heat burned where it touched, but the chill of the night still lingered in shadow. He was here, he was here, he was…

There. Right there. There in the cave. And there was chaos and blood and destruction. Something tall, like a plinth had been smashed into pieces outside the entrance to the hiding and inside.. inside there was nothing left. It had once been a basic shelter, she could see that in the ruins. Ashildr scuttled after her and froze horrified by the wall. Slowly she picked the shredded velvet from the floor, it was caked with blood.

But Clara didn’t see. All she saw was him. The Doctor. His body, curled in on itself, nothing but bone, half shredded by claws, the wounds black already, his clothes torn and ice coating what material remained. There was frost in his hair, in the hollows of his cheeks. It sparkled on each eyelash.

Slowly Clara approached him then broke into a run, ending with her crouching by him, her hands instantly making contact with his wrist, his shoulder.

‘Doctor, Doctor!’ she shook him, watched as the heat from her fingers sank into his frozen skin. She banished the frost, watched is furl back in disgust from her touch. ‘Doctor, oh god please, please I can still hear you, you must be there, please… just open your eyes, God you’re so cold… so cold… Ashildr, help me!’

She glanced back over her shoulder and Ashildr came running.

‘The sun, he needs to be in the sun, he’s freezing, we have to get him warmed up.’

‘Warmed up? We need to get him out of here, we need the TARDIS!’

‘Will you just help me!’ Clara had her arm around him and lifted, expected the resistance she associated with a fully grown man, but he was as light as a feather. With Ashildr trying to steady him up, Clara pulled him against her body, half slumped over her shoulder as she stood.

‘There, you take the other side…. If we can get him to…’

‘Clara….’

His voice cracked over the word. He knew her name. He knew _her_.

‘Clara…’ he breathed.

She leaned back, still supporting him and looked up into his face. So many questions she wanted to ask that face.

‘Doctor?’

Why was he here? Why were there two of him? How did he know her name? Wasn’t she gone to him? Didn’t all that burn from his memory? Or was that day in the Diner a lie? Was it as she had long suspected, a truth that Time Lord minds don’t forget? What did she do now? Was being here dangerous? Weren’t they the hybrid after all? Those creatures could come back and then what? She had thought she could do this, but maybe this was proof. Reapers and blood and chaos. Wasn’t that a sign of things to come, just like the things that always happened when they were together?

He was watching her and she realised at last he was listening. His skin bare through the tears in his shirt, her fingers touched his back and he could hear, and ti was easier for him than whatever he was doing to lure her to the cave. Touch telepath. He smiled weakly as he realised she had put two and two together. He couldn’t speak, she felt it, he was too weak, but he could hear and he could think, and he could tell her things.

Thank you.

She looked down and he unfurled his hand. A tiny shard of Radthorpium lay in his palm. Clever thing, he did a clever thing and she couldn’t help but smile. He couldn’t broadcast, but he could use something to do the job for him. He grinned toothily, as proud of himself as ever and she shook her head at him, It felt like nothing had ever changed. Until he staggered weakly against her and she caught him.

She could feel his body warming through her clothes, the heat from her seeping into his cold skin. He was drinking from her endless supply of static temperature. And he was drinking greedily. Not just the warmth but something more, something she wasn’t familiar with but linked to life itself. He was almost out of it, he explained apologetically with his eyes.

‘Take as much as you need,’ she said quietly, ‘Whatever ‘it’ is… I don’t seem to run low on it these days…’

His eyes close slowly once and she saw sadness cross his face before they opened again. She realised that her endless supply of warmth and ‘lifeforce’ had to him come at a huge price. He could feel it, her stasis, and he knew how it had happened, and he knew all that had gone between then and now. He saw and he felt everything at once, from the moment he pulled her from her death to the moment she had tried to die again.

‘I’m….’ he said.

Clara pulled him fiercely to her and pressed her cheek against his chest. And this time she felt him move, felt the air fill his lungs as she held him.

‘Don’t you dare apologise,’ she said, ‘Don’t you ever apologise again. I’m going to take care of you, I’m going to get you better, and then you can tell me everything and bleat on about time lines and hybrids and why this is all a really, really bad idea but until then, you listen to me, don’t you ever say you’re sorry….’

But she heard it anyway, in every double beat of his hearts.


End file.
